Cat’s Eye
When is an anthology not an anthology? Usually it’s when the stories involved are linked not so much by a common theme but rather by a particular main character who somehow manages to play a role in each story before moving on to the next (Tim Roth in Four Rooms comes to mind playing a main character whose entire arc plays out over the course of each segment that he’s involved in). However, something that might be interesting for many is what if that main character was a cat?? And not necessarily a talking, animated cat (or one whose thoughts are given via voiceover), but an actual, live, well trained feline who is given the task of carrying the whole movie which otherwise is comprised of a cast of well known human actors. The concept of having a live animal be the star of a movie (or TV show) is not a new one as anybody who remembers the heyday of Benji or Lassie can attest to, but it is rare to see it especially today in this day and age. Combine that with having this particular cat starring in a HORROR movie based upon the writings of Stephen King (and with a screenplay written by him). King has essentially become our go to guy for junk food horror, a guy with tremendous talent who is capable of epic, moving works (The Stand, The Dead Zone) but has also suffered from overexposure and the tendency to literally have had EVERYTHING he’s ever written been adapted at one time or another for either movies or television (keeping in mind that some things like Shawshank Redemption were based on very threadbare short stories that King wrote and were more or less fleshed out by the adapting filmmaker). This 1985 release which uses two stories originally in his short story collection and a third segment written by King to incorporate the main character of the cat more into the story is unusual in many ways, a 1980s horror movie that is actually rated PG-13 that contains a handful of squeamish moments but that nonetheless is still suitable for families with children (but not at all like the spate of PG-13 horror in the late 1990s and early 2000s that purposely watered down the scares to get their rating and draw in the kids to the theatres). In a nutshell, the story depicts our cat (who had a deleted prologue explaining more about who he is supposed to be) as being an animal who has made some sort of psychic contact with a mysterious little girl (Drew Barrymore) who appears to him as some sort of a ghostlike apparition imploring him to come save her soon from some kind of evil that we presume is after her. With this purpose to his life having been established, it now becomes up to the cat to actually FIND Barrymore but on the way he gets caught up in other adventures where he witnesses first hand the darker elements of human nature, elements which on a cursory glance appear to be either Mafia related or at least above the laws of mankind due to extravagant wealth. The cat takes a wrong turn somewhere and winds up in New York City where he is grabbed up by a thug like individual and taken to what appears to be a clinic to help smokers quit smoking and stay off cigarettes where we meet a potential client played by James Woods, looking to quit the habit until he meets the boss of the clinic played quite unnervingly by Alan King. King tells Woods that from now on he will smoke no more and if he does, the first offense is that his wife will be thrown into a specially wired room and made to be shocked while she dances around from the electricity and he watches (the cat is used here as a test demonstration subject for this) and if he smokes a second time, his special needs daughter will be given the same treatment (also played by Barrymore with little to no significance given to the dual casting although given her particular little girl acting style from E.T., watching Barrymore playing a special needs child here seems appropriate). Woods is then told that if he smokes a third time, a guy that they keep on hand for certain nasty kinds of work will literally rape his wife and on a fourth offense they just “give up” (i.e. kill you). How will they know? Well, apparently they will keep “round the clock” surveillance on Woods (including hiding out at his house at all hours) and act accordingly if he’s caught lighting up. As unrealistic as this scenario is (it’s implied that King has connections to either The Mob or The CIA), it’s clear that despite Woods’ protests, there’s little to nothing he can do with either law enforcement or the legal system to stop these guys from kidnapping or harming his family (if need be) which doesn’t help his paranoia any, but the lack of realism here is tempered by the wicked parody of the sometimes unfair stigma that smokers can be known to receive (moreso even today than back then) and the sometimes vicious backlash from the so called anti smoking types that gives this part of the movie its sting even as the cat gets away from these types and into the arms of somebody even worse: an Atlantic City gangster / gambler (Kenneth McMillan) who has a habit of loving to place bets on EVERYTHING, every possible type of scenario where a wager can be made, so much so that when his goons grab the pretty boy tennis pro (Robert “Ted Striker” Hays) who has been screwing his wife, instead of killing him outright, he decides to make a bet with him instead. If Hays can wiggle his way all around the outside ledge of McMillan’s high rise penthouse without falling to his death, he’ll get to keep the rich man’s wife along with a portion of his money. Hays agrees, only to find that McMillan has come up with a series of lame, unimaginative booby traps designed to cause Hays to lose the bet. Because of that (and despite a twist ending that is not necessarily a happy one), this turns out to be the weakest of the segments with McMillan giving a good villain performance but not really coming across as being exactly creative or even clever as the cat sticks around until the right moment when he can personally help turn the tables on the rich man and then takes off for his next destination. That destination is none other than Wilmington, North Carolina (actually where the whole movie was filmed) where he finally finds Barrymore and also something much worse: her bitchy but still hot mother (Candy Clark) who completely disapproves of her young daughter adopting and bonding with a stray cat that seems to have wandered in out of nowhere even though Barrymore’s dad (James Naughton) works out a compromise that the cat (now given the name “General”) can be indoors during the day but must be kept outside at night. That’s exactly what needs to be heard by the evil and magical troll who’s been stalking Barrymore (and was what she was referring to as needing to be saved from in her earlier psychic transmissions to the cat) with the intention of climbing in her bed at night so that he can steal her breath / soul while she is sleeping (an accusation that Barrymore’s unseen, idiot grandma had apparently told her mother on the phone as being something that cats are actually known to do). The first battle between the cat and the troll winds up being a draw although the troll does manage to kill Barrymore’s pet parakeet and successfully frames General for it which results in Clark having a shit fit and taking General down to the local Wilmington animal shelter where his age marks him for a trip to the gas chamber unless the truly heroic feline can manage to escape and make his way through a thunderous rainstorm for the rematch and final confrontation with the fiendish creature who (complete with bells jangling from his court jester’s hat and a small, concealed blade that he carries) just cannot wait to claim the little girl’s soul once and for all (although he’d probably get the job done a lot quicker if he had brought a syringe filled with heroin with him since after all this is Wilmington). The abrupt shift from having the cat encountering and dealing with very real, very human evil to a clearly supernatural creature is a bit rough, but at least it allows General to take center stage for the last third of the movie instead of even trying to steal scenes from somebody like James Woods and instead have Drew Barrymore doing her cutesy, drooling little girl routine to better effect here than in some of her other films around that time, with General smoothly carrying her through her scenes and keeping this a perfectly appropriate little family horror movie that will also have appeal to both cat lovers and animal lovers alike…
8/10